As computers and computer networks being widely adopted, Internet has penetrated into all aspects of people's work, study and everyday life. In recent years, entertainment software providing virtual pets is becoming more and more popular among Internet users. Virtual pets usually have virtual cartoon appearances, and some intelligent ones even have certain personalities which make them more adorable. A user may get amusement through interactive operations, such as “feeding” a virtual pet, playing games with a virtual pet and so on.
A virtual pet actually is a software system providing entertainment which may run independently on a desktop of a user or be a component of a web page or be in other forms. A virtual pet may run on the Internet, or may run independently in a computer without connection to the Internet.
Although current virtual pets are somewhat intelligent, people expect more. FIG. 1 is a schematic illustrating interaction between a virtual pet and a user in accordance with the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1, some command symbols are defined in current virtual pet system, and users can click a command symbol to perform some uncomplicated interaction with a virtual pet. However, this kind of interaction is so simple that users can not be entertained in a much more intelligent way.
In fact, many users expect their pets to use natural language to chat with them, or even learn language characteristics of the users, but current virtual pets can not satisfy those demands.